


the good side of the green

by thnderchld



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Trans Female Character, au where they grew up as best friends and also yay trauma, before the boat, sukis trans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 21:43:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19754356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thnderchld/pseuds/thnderchld
Summary: Jet meets an old friend before he leaves.





	the good side of the green

**Author's Note:**

> For AJ whoo! It's the first thing ive finished in 800 years.

Jet always thought the colour green was everywhere. In the forests, with their leaves turning the rich colour of spring. In the home he knew when he was young, when the summer came and turned everything that rich colour that his mother had always loved. Green was a colour that had doused his dreams for as long as he could remember- green, with orange licking at the edges.

He remembered Kyoshi in those few years he’d stayed there, the richness of the warriors’ garments.

There is no green at Half Moon Bay. He doesn’t know if they’re beneath the earth, or if this was built around him, but the lack of green mixed with the scent of sweat and desperation threatens to drive him insane. It’s all he can do to not snap at Smellerbee and Longshot, to not drive away the only two people he has left.

He hums and turns the piece of straw over in his mouth. He doesn’t doubt that Smellerbee will mock him for it in a few hours, but for now he savours it. It tastes like the Earth Kingdom as he knows it, the sweetness of grass and breeze. Now to be switched out for musty grass plucked from mattresses. He wrinkles his nose at the thought.

It’s as he’s thinking that he catches the sight of someone standing in his periphery, watching. He turns his gaze and sees a woman dressed in green, a cap settled over straight red hair. Red hair… that’s not typical in the Earth Kingdom…

“Is there a problem?” he asks, smiling. He feels stiff. He’s sold everything, _everything_ for these Ba Sing Se tickets, and if anything happens to them now then he’s going to go fucking rabid. Fuck Ba Sing Se, fuck these boats, fuck those walls.

He ignores the spark inside him that wishes desperately for this lady to turn him back; to deliver him back to his makeshift palace among the trees, with all his kids waiting for him.

The woman walks towards him and he sees that she is young. She has to be his age, if not a bit older. She stops, seemingly uncertain of what to say. “No, there’s not a problem.”

“Is the problem my dashing smile? I’m sorry, it’s a condition and it’s terminal.”

She frowns, analysing him even further. He didn’t exactly expect that to work, but he hopes it doesn’t put him in jail.

“Is your name Jet?”

Okay, shit. He’s definitely not getting on this boat.

“So what if it is?”

“Answer the question.”

Jet looks at her again. This time he looks at her closer, at red hair framing a soft-cheeked face. “Yes,” he decides, “My name’s Jet. What’s yours.”

“Take a guess.” He narrows his eyes further. “Suki,” she says before he can speak.

“I don’t know you.”

He yelps as she punches him in the shoulder and draws back with a grin. He opens his mouth to yell at her, but stops as it clicks. Red hair, _green_. Those uncharacteristic blue eyes that supposedly came from waterbenders a few hundred generations ago. He remembers the streets of Kyoshi, with a red-haired kid by his side saying _I think they were wrong when they called me a boy._

“Suki!” He launches forward and pulls her into a hug before he can really process the situation. So much has changed, she has changed, but he can still feel that firm grip of his old best friend.

She holds him in return, her grip equally strong.

* * *

A lot has changed. Jet was 12 when he left, with Suki standing in the doorstep and watching him go. Sitting on the docks, waiting for the ship, Jet ignores the fact that he should probably return to his siblings. He means the best, but this is the first person in months who doesn’t know the horrible crime he committed. Both ignoring their duties, they snack on a piece of bread Suki got for her duty. Together, they talk about the things that have happened to them.

“I met the Avatar.”

“I kissed his girlfriend.”

“You gave me this scar. Asshole.”

“I’ve seen nearly the whole Earth Kingdom. I got really cool since you saw me.”

“Yeah, right.”

Curled beneath the eaves of a gaping mountain, Jet looks up at the ceiling. He trembles a little, thinking about how easy it could be for this mountain to crash down and kill them all. Smash the boats and crush the port.  
“I never imagined you’d be a refugee,” Suki says, picking at the hem of her pants. “No offence to them, but you always seemed to be more… fighty.”

“Well I never imagined you’d be a cop,” he raised an eyebrow, “Let alone an immigration cop.”

Suki scoffs. “I am not a cop! I make sure people are safe, and trust me when I say I overlook any dodgy stuff in the paperwork.” She glances down, and for a moment she looks younger, a different shade of the Suki he knew when he was little. He thinks he had a crush on her for a while. “I’m not a cop, I’m a warrior. I’m the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, now.”

Jet remembers a younger Suki, patting powder onto her face as though being like them would make her untouchable, as though it would render her invincible, even when she and Jet were starving. Of course, then she’d beat the shit out of him.

And now she is that warrior, he thinks to himself. She wears the powder even when no one can see it. She’s still playing at invincibility.

But then he glances at the scar on her forehead, from when their wrestling sent her into the stones and they thought she’d split her head open. It had still been a wound the last time he saw her.

He remembers her standing in the doorway at night time, her eyes steely and cold as he escaped from his first of many jail sentences. _Why don’t you just stay?  
I can’t do anything in jail. I’ll die there._

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she glances up at him in surprise for a moment before regaining her composure. “For how I left. I wish I could have stayed.”

Suki smiles. “It’s alright. I’ve had a lot of training.”  
“I wish you could’ve left with me.”

“I know.”

It’s at that moment that Jet hears Smellerbee’s call over the crowd. The two of them stand up, and Jet spares a glance towards the ship that he knows will take him away from all this. The ship that will act as damage control, taking him towards the city that isn’t meant to keep the Fire Nation out so much as to keep _him_ in.

He glances back at Suki and for a moment she is that young girl watching him leave again. There’s that small dip between her eyebrows that gives her away, so small that no one else would ever notice it.

“I’ll find you if I ever visit Ba Sing Se,” she smiles, but he knows it isn’t really a question. He thinks those walls will kill her, and Suki has escaped from enough cages that she’ll hardly choose another.

“I’ll keep a room ready for you,” he says, and smiles back anyway.


End file.
